


Convict-in-Law

by Ernmark (M_Moonshade)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, Juno is a good partner, M/M, Mag survived New Kinshasa AU, Peter and Mag have some issues to work out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-02 01:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16776865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Moonshade/pseuds/Ernmark
Summary: After surviving Peter's betrayal, Mag tries to make a life for himself as a criminal on Mars.He wasn't counting on Juno Steel, Private Eye, and his new partner.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> dykerose-deactivated20170413 asked:
> 
> AU mag survives getting stabbed and gets away somehow, unknown to Peter who thinks he's dead and the two bump into each other years and years later like post murderous mask type of later

Mag will be the first to admit it: he’s slipping. It’s one part old age, one part being surrounded by imbeciles. 

That’s what he gets, he supposes. If he wants subordinates who won’t ask inconvenient questions, he has to put up with ones who don’t ask any questions at all– even when they really should. He could spend years training them properly, but why bother? He’ll just get rid of them when they stop being useful.

Now he’s starting to regret that decision. Teaching his current set of minions how to better cover their tracks might have been a worthwhile investment.

Because the man who opens the door to his hideout isn’t one of his subordinates. 

It’s a short man, dark-skinned and heavily scarred, with the familiar musculature of a street brawler, all wrapped up in a low-drawn hat and a knife-proof trench coat. A gumshoe if Mag ever saw one.

Only the look in the detective’s one eye isn’t one that Mag would describe as ‘hard boiled’. He’s staring right at Mag, but he looks like he’s seeing a ghost.

“It can’t be,” the detective whispers.

And Mag, never one to miss an opportunity, takes advantage of the man’s shock to reach for a smoke bomb–

Only to get caught by a laser blast square in the chest.

* * *

Mag remains perfectly still even after he comes to. It’s a hard-earned habit, and a valuable one, too. Because when he slits his eyes open, the detective is staring right at him. But his attention is divided– currently, it seems like most of it is diverted to the comms pressed to his ear.

“It looks like him– I mean, at least I think it does? I’ve only ever seen him from inside your head. He seems like he’s the right age. Did he ever mention having a brother? A… I don’t know, a cousin?”

There’s a pause.

“Yeah, there’s a scar. You can barely see it, though– it looks like it’s been tattooed over. The tattoo’s faded, too. Could be ten years old, could be older. Hard to tell at this point.”

The mention of the scar sends a cold sweat down Mag’s spine. 

He prefers to avoid identifiable marks when he can, but he couldn’t stand leaving the scar uncovered. It was too big, too obvious. Any time a heist involved stripping down– swimming, or sex, or just changing clothes in public– somebody inevitably asked about it. And every time, the lies he came up with tripped awkwardly off his tongue. Even years later, the truth was too raw:

_That’s where my son tried to kill me._

It’s better that they ask about a tattoo. That, at least, has no meaning or emotion attached to it.

But this gives him a better idea of who he’s dealing with– because there’s only a limited number of people who have ever seen that scar to begin with, before the tattoo covered it. 

“I’ll be here,” the detective continues. “Don’t worry; he’s not tied up so much as he is cocooned. He won’t get out of that anytime soon.” Another pause. “Of course I won’t take my eye off him. A few sets of handcuffs and chains never stopped you, did they? Drive safe.” 

There goes any hope that they’d underestimate him. Damn.

Who the hell is this person? 

He’s running through a list of potential culprits and making escape plans while the detective watches him pretend to sleep. He even comes up with a few ideas that might just get him out of this pickle.

But then the door opens. There are footsteps. A sharp intake of breath.

“Is he still unconscious? After all this time?” There’s something familiar about that voice. It’s uncanny.

“Nah,” the detective says. “He’s been playing dead for the past half twenty minutes at least. Probably thought he could knock me out when I came to check on him.” He pauses. “That’s where you learned that trick, isn’t it?”

No. It can’t be.

“It… it is.” But now that he’s heard that voice, he can’t unhear it. It’s deeper than he remembered it. Softer. 

There’s nothing to be gained by keeping up this ruse. Mag looks up, finally craning his neck to look properly at the newcomer. 

He’s tall and willowy, impossibly elegant and put together even now. He’s dressed well– stylish, but not ostentatious, and slight bulges in his suit betray overstuffed pockets, just like when he was a kid. He was a good-looking kid, but the man he’s grown into is almost regal in his beauty– a fact probably not missed by the detective who’s got one arm wrapped protectively around his shoulders.

It’s him. It’s unmistakably him.

And Mag lets himself say the words he never thought he’d utter again. 

“Peter. My boy.”


	2. Chapter 2

Mag doesn’t know exactly where he is. Which is to say, he knows that Peter and his lady friend put a bag over his head, drove in circles a few times before they stopped at his apartment, and took the elevator for a joyride so he couldn’t time how long it took to reach the proper floor. 

It’s all fairly standard for this sort of thing, and Mag isn’t sure whether he approves of their precautions or is offended that Peter feels he has to take them in the first place. 

Maybe not too offended, considering their last conversation ended with a stabbing. Ah well.

It isn’t as though he couldn’t find this place again if he tried. He’s sure a few quick internet searches can bring him the information he needs without too much trouble. After all, a man should know where his son lives.

This is most definitely Peter’s apartment. He knows it the moment the bag is off his head. Not just from the smell– fresh bread and Brahmese elderflower– but the distinct lack of dust around the vents that indicates where emergency supplies are stashed away, the odd little somethings secured underneath shelves far enough back that nobody else would think to look, the blueprints hidden underneath a pile of papers on the table. There are other elements here that aren’t Peter’s– utensils Mag can’t even name sitting in the kitchen, breathtakingly hideous art hanging from the walls, and a war-era trench coat hanging from a hook by the door. Peter and the gumshoe are sticking together, it seems.

“Quite a place you’ve got here, Peter,” he says once he’s got his bearings.

Peter opens his mouth, but shuts it again after a moment of indecision.

The detective leans in. “I’m gonna make a call. Do you need me to wait, or…?”

“Go ahead,” Peter assures him. “I can handle this.”

The detective touches Peter’s shoulder for a moment. It’s a light, casual touch, but the kind that communicates volumes. “Shout if you need me.” And then he vanishes into another room. The bedroom, judging by the momentary glimpse Mag manages to catch.

That just leaves the two of them. 

When Peter doesn’t say anything for too long, Mag decides to break the silence.

“So you have a partner now,” he says. “That’s exciting.”

Peter looks at him oddly. “And you have henchpeople.” 

“What can I say? Some jobs just can’t be done alone.” 

“Clearly not. Especially when you’re running an operation of this size.” 

Mag shrugs as much as he can while tied up. “I think I’ve done fairly well for myself.”

Peter just gives him a dry look. 

“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve gone all holier-than-thou on me, Pete. You can’t have been out of the game so long that you can’t appreciate a good heist.”

“I can,” he says coolly. “When I see one. That operation was sloppy, Mag. You can do better.”

Okay, that’s fair. “With you, maybe. But you don’t know how hard it is to find a decent thief these days.” He trails off hopefully. Maybe if they were to team up again, for old times…

“This is the wrong place to lose your edge.” Peter kneels and starts untying the miles of rope and chain. He looks at what he’s doing, but his eyes avoid Mag’s face. “You’ve been stealing from some very dangerous people, you know; you’re lucky we’re the ones who caught you, and not one of them.” 

Mag sighs; the relief in his aching joints is heavenly. “Thank you, Pete. I’ve got to say, your partner over there didn’t have to tie me up so tight.”

“He did if he didn’t want you getting away.” 

Well, that’s oddly specific phrasing. Mag tilts his head. “So is this you letting me go, then?”

“We’re still undecided on that matter.” The last of the chains are tugged away and the several layers of handcuffs are unlatched from around his wrists. “Are we going to regret it if we do?”

“Oh, Pete. This isn’t about what happened in New Kinshasa, is it?” He’s about to say something about bygones and water under the bridge and all that– Mag lied to him, Peter tried to murder him, it all balances out in the end– but he’s stopped by the sudden sharpness in Peter’s eyes. “I thought there was no other way to stop New Kinshasa, and you proved me wrong. I’m sorry things got so ugly between us in the end, Peter. I’ve regretted it ever since.”

“Mag,” he says softly, and Mag can almost hear the words “I’m sorry” fighting to leave his mouth. Instead what comes out is, “You were going to kill thousands of people.” 

_Is it too much to hope that you’ll meet me halfway?_

Before Mag can say a word in his defense, the detective pokes his head through the bedroom door. “Peter. A word.” 

It’s almost painful to see the relief on Peter’s face at the interruption. “Stay put,” he tells Mag, and then he rises and goes after his detective.

The moment the door shuts behind him, Mag is on his feet, slipping off his shoes so his footsteps won’t give him away. He tries for the door first, mostly to cover all his bases; predictably, it’s sealed with a digital lock, and he doesn’t have the tools to hack it.

The windows, then. His joints won’t thank him for the climb, but he’ll get over it. He tries each of the windows in turn, but they won’t budge. They’re locked just as thoroughly as the door.

Mag isn’t going anywhere.


	3. Chapter 3

There are a few useful little trinkets hidden in the secret places of the apartment. Mag pockets a few, though he notices the conspicuous absence of guns and knives where they clearly used to be. His boy always was clever, even if he could get swept up in the heat of the moment sometimes. 

Speaking of which…

Since escape is, for the moment, impossible, Mag opts to spend his time collecting information. Or, in this case, listening at the door like a reporter for one of those tabloids.

“–do we do with him?” Peter asks, sounding miserable. 

“He’s your…” The detective makes a vague sound. “Whatever he is. What I’m trying to say is that it’s your decision. I’ll follow your lead.” 

There’s a long, bitter pause before Peter answers. “I can’t just turn him in. He’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars, Juno. Assuming they don’t send him back to Brahma.” 

“Do they know he was involved in what happened?” 

Of course they do. The constables scanned him before they sent for a cleanup crew. What they didn’t do was check for a pulse. 

Back then, New Kinshasa was robbed of a body to make a proper example of. If they get their hands on him now, they’ll make sure to rectify that, and thoroughly. The best he can hope for is a quick execution. Most likely it’ll be slow.

“I can’t.” Peter’s voice is muffled, like he’s talking through his hands. “Juno, I can’t…”

The detective’s voice is just as soft. “Then we don’t have to.”

_There you have it. Problem solved. Wasn’t that easy, boys?_

“But we can’t just let him go,” Peter says, and it stings to hear him say it. “You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“I think I’ve got a rough idea, actually.” 

Their voices fade into murmurs. In his salad days, Mag might have been able to make out the words, but his hearing isn’t what it used to be. Besides, he isn’t entirely sure he wants to keep listening. 

It’s one thing to listen to two people debating whether he lives or dies– he’s done more than his share of that over the years, after all– but hearing Peter fall apart like this is more than his old heart can take. 

He’s far away from the bedroom door when it opens, but the detective eyes him warily when he steps out. Peter doesn’t join him. There’s a sound of a digital lock disengaging, a window scraping across its frame, and the slight creak of a body climbing onto the fire escape.

The meaning behind it isn’t lost on Mag: Peter would rather take the stairs down than cross through this room and talk to him again.

The detective grabs the bag and tosses it at him. “Put that on. We’re going for a ride.” 

He brings out a pair of handcuffs and starts moving closer. It’s a bad move. The boys may have taken Mag’s knives, but he’s got a ball-point pen in his pocket, swiped from a coffee cup by the windowsill. One well-aimed stab could drive it into the detective’s eye, and then he can just walk out of here at his leisure.

And with anyone else, he might do exactly that. A stranger’s life is a small price to pay for freedom, after all. But this is no ordinary stranger. This detective means something to Peter. 

“Is there any point to asking where you’re planning to take me?” he asks, allowing his hands to be hancuffed behind his back.

“The spaceport,” the detective says gruffly. “You’re going to take the first ship off Mars, and you’re never coming back. You got that?”

“That might be difficult without my passport–” 

“Peter’s getting it from your office.”

“How do you know–”

“It was in the hidden compartment in the third drawer, under the ledgers. What, did you think I wouldn’t search the place while you were unconscious?” 

“I can see why he likes you.” The world goes dark as the bag is pulled tight over Mag’s head. His beard catches unpleasantly on the rough burlap. 

“Don’t,” Juno growls, his voice slightly muffled by the burlap. 

“Is he meeting us at the spaceport, then?” 

The detective doesn’t answer him, or any of his questions on the ride to the spaceport. There’s nothing but a stony silence until the bag is pulled off his head. 

“This is your stop,” the detective says, unlocking the remaining handcuffs. Half of the sets are already scattered across his seat– Mag had to do something with his hands all this time, after all. As soon as he’s free, the detective shoves Mag’s passport into his hands. “There’s a ship heading to Betelgeuse within an hour. You’re going to be on it, or so help me God–”

“Isn’t Pete coming to send me off?” Mag asks.

“No.” 

“Come now, don’t I at least get a goodbye from my boy?”

Suddenly the detective is in his face, his eye blazing. “Listen up, you parasite. The fact that you’re family is the only reason you’re here right now, and not rotting in a prison cell. He doesn’t owe you shit. And I swear to God, if you make him regret doing this for you, _I_ will make _you_ regret it. Do you understand me?”

It’s a struggle for Mag to keep his expression neutral. “I think you’ve made your position pretty clear.” 

“Then get the hell out of my city.” 

* * *

To Mag’s credit, he does leave Hyperion City, though he doesn’t take the first ship offworld. The one he books brings him to Olympus Mons, and to the modest haul he has stashed away in the basement of a florist’s shop.

If he’s going to be a part of Peter’s life, he’s got preparations to make first.

He pulls out the photo he snatched off the apartment wall– the first picture he’s seen of Peter since New Kinshasa.

The detective said he was family, and that means there’s still a chance.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bittersweet-mojo asked:
> 
> For that old mag survives au, do you think mag would be interested in the detective courting his boy? I could see him as the extensive research/spying or tailing type

Mag wouldn’t call what he’s doing stalking. It’s what any concerned parent would do for their child. Mag has the right to be concerned.

Mag still remembers the bright-eyed boy with the great big heart, the one who wanted the needy to call out to him, the one who wanted to save the whole universe and then some. 

Oh, sure, Peter may be older now, but he hasn’t lost that heart. Mag can see that from a mile away. And a tender heart like that is vulnerable. It can be so easily broken– it barely takes anything at all, really. A careless word. A well-intentioned lie…

Mag isn’t about to let Peter’s heart get broken again. Not if he can do something about it.

So here’s a question for the ages: what kind of detective managed to catch this thief’s heart? What kind of man is Juno Steel?

The first answer, clearly is that he’s also a… well, “lady” is being awfully generous, but “dame” is too uncomfortable a term for the person sleeping with his son. And they are most definitely sleeping together. Mag isn’t about to look for particulars, but nobody in an asexual relationship goes through that much lube.

Which brings up the next order of business.

Mag spends three weeks tailing Juno, watching him go through every little detail of what a more organized person would call a routine. There’s no evidence of polyamory within their relationship, which leaves the question of infidelity. Is Juno Steel the type to cheat? Or is he not that kind of girl? 

It’s hard to tell at first; it seems the detective gets into brooding moods– the type where he stares intently at one thing in particular for too long to be comfortable, especially when what he’s staring at is a particularly attractive person. 

There seem to be quite a few particularly attractive people in his life: actors, models, adult entertainers, adulterers, one man who seems to be the poster boy for a pharmaceutical company. There are plenty of options if a certain detective were inclined to stray. It’s not even a question of _if_ , but with whom.

One day Juno deviates from his routine and drives into a residential zone. The neighborhood is okay, but nothing special. The kind of people who live around here wouldn’t be able to afford his rates. A personal matter, then. That’s confirmed when Juno loops the neighborhood a few times, hoping to shake a tail– as if Mag was such an amateur!

He finally stops in front of a cramped apartment building across the street from the botánica and steps inside. The door shuts behind him, but through the little pane of glass beside the door, Mag spies a woman throwing her arms around him.

He knew it. 

Mag grabs a scrap of paper and jots down the address. He’ll come back tonight when everyone’s asleep and snag some mail from the mailbox– that should give him the woman’s name. Between that and the address he’ll have enough to look her up in some government databases, and–

There’s a tap on his window. When he looks up, he finds himself staring into the face of a barrel-chested man with an enormous mustache. He’s out of uniform, but if the posture or the hair didn’t give him away as a cop, the digital ticket book in his hand does that quite nicely.

Mag rolls down his window. “Is there a problem, officer?”

“Problem?” the cop scoffs. “Oh sure, there’s no problem. Nothing at all wrong with a suspicious person loitering in a stolen car outside a private residence like an old-fashioned Peeping Larry. Or with obstructing a fire hydrant in an emergency lane. Or with _stalking a private citizen_.”

Mag feigns affront. “Stalking? I have no idea–”

“Can it, tough guy,” the cop barks. “I’ve got video footage right here of you tailing the little lady over there for sixteen blocks. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t wagon your sorry rear back to central processing right now.”

“This is all a big misunderstanding,” Mag says smoothly. “I’m a private investigator, you see.” 

The cop furrows his bushy eyebrows. “Funny. I haven’t seen you around before, and I see a whole lotta PIs.” 

“I’m actually new to the business,” Mag says. “I retired not too long ago, and I needed a bit of excitement in my life. You know how it is.”

“You picked the wrong town to go looking for excitement.” 

Apparently this is Mag’s persona now, and he slips into it seamlessly. He widens his eyes a little, trying harder to play the bored old armchair investigator. “Oh, I’m sure it’s not going to be anything too exciting. Just an adultery case, really.” He glances back into the house. He can still see the two sillhouettes in the window. “I’ve almost caught him in the act. So if you would give me just a few more minutes, I can be out of here–” 

He must really be slipping in his old age, because it’s only then that he looks back at the cop. And the cop is _livid_. His face has skipped past red, settling instead on a ruddy plum color.

“It’s bad enough that you go around stalking Juno,” the cop says, sounding for the world like a volcano about to erupt. “God knows he probably did something along the line to deserve it. But when you start pointing your grubby fingers at my _wife_.”

Mag turns around again to look at the apartment. The window is presently occupied by two faces– Juno and the woman– plus maybe half a dozen children who all look suspiciously like the cop, all of them fighting to get a good look at what their daddy is yelling about.

The grin on Juno’s face is utter sadistic glee.

And that’s when Mag realizes that he might have underestimated his new son-in-law.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter: in which Knife Dad meets Cop Dad


End file.
